1. Field of the invention
The invention relates to a telecommunication network management method. It also relates to a network management unit implementing the method. The invention applies to managing the availability and use of physical resources.
2. Description of the prior art
Managing a telecommunication network requires an information system able to supply knowledge of physical resources, namely the resources of the network elements (NE), also referred to as nodes, their termination points and the properties of their termination points (more specifically capacity in terms of bandwidth, the maximum number of switchpaths and the available switchpath identifiers).
The termination points are called access points in an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network.
The termination points of a network element have technical characteristics having properties dedicated to the connectivity aspect. The remainder of this disclosure is concerned with these properties. They include the capacity in terms of bandwidth (input bandwidth, output bandwidth); the capacity in terms of the maximum number of switchpaths and the available switchpath identifiers may also be cited.
The information system is based on three-levels of software.
A first level is called the equipment management layer (EML). This is for the most part the application layer responsible for the interface with the network element (NE). This layer provides a knowledge of the status of the network element and is used to send management commands to the element.
A second level is called the network management layer (NML). This is the layer for controlling the switchpaths enabling calls to be set up within a network.
A third level is called the services management layer (SML). This is the layer dedicated to managing services. For example, it is used to manage private networks using the network of a telecommunications operator.
The invention is located at the interface of the NML and SML, as shown diagrammatically in FIG. 1.
It provides all users with a real time view of the resources that are available and that are in use in the short term and in the long term.
In particular, it enables periodic or aperiodic reservation of some or all of the capacity offered by a physical telecommunication resource (for example, the bandwidth capacity offered for each termination point of a node and/or the capacity offered in terms of the maximum number of switchpaths and the capacity offered in terms of identifiers for each termination point of that node).
At present, network management systems manage the paths/connections between the network elements, but most of-them operate on the principle of real time creation/reservation and suppression.
The prior art systems are no longer suitable because of the increasing demand for network capacity and in particular for capacity in terms of bandwidth and the number of switch points.
Moreover, because of the development of new services, such as management of virtual private networks (VPN), requirements for operator assistance are increasing, in particular in the provision of network quality of service management services.
What is more, because of developments in traffic engineering, constraintbased routing algorithms need to rely on services managing availability and use of resources to optimize routing (from the routing point of view, bandwidth is seen as a constraint rather than a resource property).
The invention solves the above problem.